Marvels of Modern Science

CHAPTER XV. Can We Communicate With Other Worlds?

CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WORLDS? Vastness of Nature. Star distances. Problem of communicating with Mars. The Great Beyond.

Introduction

The purpose of this little book is to give a general idea of a few of the great achievements of our time. Within such a limited space it was impossible to even mention thousands more of the great inventions and triumphs which mark the rushing progress of the world in the present century; therefore, only those subjects have been treated which appeal with more than passing interest to all. For instance, the flying machine is engaging the attention of the old, the young and the middle-aged, and soon the whole world will be on the wing. Radium, "the revealer," is opening the door to possibilities almost beyond human conception. Wireless Telegraphy is crossing thousands of miles of space with invisible feet and making the nations of the earth as one. 'Tis the same with the other subjects,--one and all are of vital, human interest, and are extremely attractive on account of their importance in the civilization of today. Mighty, sublime, wonderful, as have been the achievements of past science, as yet we are but on the verge of the continents of discovery. Where is the wizard who can tell what lies in the womb of time? Just as our conceptions of many things have been revolutionized in the past, those which we hold to-day of the cosmic processes may have to be remodeled in the future. The men of fifty years hence may laugh at the circumscribed knowledge of the present and shake their wise heads in contemplation of what they will term our crudities, and which we now call progress. Science is ever on the march and what is new to-day will be old to-morrow. We cannot go back, we must go forward, and although we can never reach finality in aught, we can improve on the past to enrich the future. If this volume creates an interest and arouses an enthusiasm in the ordinary men and women into whose hands it may come, and stimulates them to a study of the great events making for the enlightenment, progress and elevation of the race, it shall have fulfilled its mission and serve the purpose for which it was written.

CHAPTER I. Flying Machines

FLYING MACHINES

Early Attempts at Flight--The Dirigible--Professor Langley's Experiment--The Wright Brothers--Count Zeppelin--Recent Aeroplane Records.

It is hard to determine when men first essayed the attempt to fly. In myth, legend and tradition we find allusions to aerial flight and from the very dawn of authentic history, philosophers, poets, and writers have made allusion to the subject, showing that the idea must have early taken root in the restless human heart. Aeschylus exclaims:

"Oh, might I sit, sublime in air Where watery clouds the freezing snows prepare!"

Ariosto in his "Orlando Furioso" makes an English knight, whom he names Astolpho, fly to the banks of the Nile; nowadays the authors are trying to make their heroes fly to the North Pole.

Some will have it that the ancient world had a civilization much higher than the modern and was more advanced in knowledge. It is claimed that steam engines and electricity were common in Egypt thousands of years ago and that literature, science, art, and architecture flourished as never since. Certain it is that the Pyramids were for a long time the most solid "Skyscrapers" in the world.

Perhaps, after all, our boasted progress is but a case of going back to first principles, of history, or rather tradition repeating itself. The flying machine may not be as new as we think it is. At any rate the conception of it is old enough.

In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, often called the "Father of Philosophy," maintained that the air could be navigated. He suggested a hollow globe of copper to be filled with "ethereal air or liquid fire," but he never tried to put his suggestion into practice. Father Vasson, a missionary at Canton, in a letter dated September 5, 1694, mentions a balloon that ascended on the occasion of the coronation of the Empress Fo-Kien in 1306, but he does not state where he got the information.

The balloon is the earliest form of air machine of which we have record. In 1767 a Dr. Black of Edinburgh suggested that a thin bladder could be made to ascend if filled with inflammable air, the name then given to hydrogen gas.

In 1782 Cavallo succeeded in sending up a soap bubble filled with such gas.

It was in the same year that the Montgolfier brothers of Annonay, near Lyons in France, conceived the idea of using hot air for lifting things into the air. They got this idea from watching the smoke curling up the chimney from the heat of the fire beneath.

In 1783 they constructed the first successful balloon of which we have any description. It was in the form of a round ball, 110 feet in circumference and, with the frame weighed 300 pounds. It was filled with 22,000 cubic feet of vapor. It rose to a height of 6,000 feet and proceeded almost 7,000 feet, when it gently descended. France went wild over the exhibition.

The first to risk their lives in the air were M. Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis de Arlandes, who ascended over Paris in a hot-air balloon in November, 1783. They rose five hundred feet and traveled a distance of five miles in twenty-five minutes.

In the following December Messrs. Charles and Robert, also Frenchmen, ascended ten thousand feet and traveled twenty-seven miles in two hours.

The first balloon ascension in Great Britain was made by an experimenter named Tytler in 1784. A few months later Lunardi sailed over London.

In 1836 three Englishmen, Green, Mason and Holland, went from London to Germany, five hundred miles, in eighteen hours.

The greatest balloon exhibition up to then, indeed the greatest ever, as it has never been surpassed, was given by Glaisher and Coxwell, two Englishmen, near Wolverhampton, on September 5, 1862. They ascended to such an elevation that both lost the power of their limbs, and had not Coxwell opened the descending valve with his teeth, they would have ascended higher and probably lost their lives in the rarefied atmosphere, for there was no compressed oxygen then as now to inhale into their lungs. The last reckoning of which they were capable before Glaisher lost consciousness showed an elevation of twenty-nine thousand feet, but it is supposed that they ascended eight thousand feet higher before Coxwell was able to open the descending valve. In 1901 in the city of Berlin two Germans rose to a height of thirty-five thousand feet, but the two Englishmen of almost fifty years ago are still given credit for the highest ascent.

The largest balloon ever sent aloft was the "Giant" of M. Nadar, a Frenchman, which had a capacity of 215,000 cubic feet and required for a covering 22,000 yards of silk. It ascended from the Champ de Mars, Paris, in 1853, with fifteen passengers, all of whom came back safely.

The longest flight made in a balloon was that by Count de La Vaulx, 1193 miles in 1905.

A mammoth balloon was built in London by A. E. Gaudron. In 1908 with three other aeronauts Gaudron crossed from the Crystal Palace to the Belgian Coast at Ostend and then drifted over Northern Germany and was finally driven down by a snow storm at Mateki Derevni in Russia, having traveled 1,117 miles in 31-1/2 hours. The first attempt at constructing a dirigible balloon or airship was made by M. Giffard, a Frenchman, in 1852. The bag was spindle-shaped and 144 feet from point to point. Though it could be steered without drifting the motor was too weak to propel it. Giffard had many imitations in the spindle-shaped envelope construction, but it was a long time before any good results were obtained.

It was not until 1884 that M. Gaston Tissandier constructed a dirigible in any way worthy of the name. It was operated by a motor driven by a bichromate of soda battery. The motor weighed 121 lbs. The cells held liquid enough to work for 2-1/2 hours, generating 1-1/3 horse power. The screw had two arms and was over nine feet in circumference. Tissandier made some successful flights.

The first dirigible balloon to return whence it started was that known as La France. This airship was also constructed in 1884. The designer was Commander Renard of the French Marine Corps assisted by Captain Krebs of the same service. The length of the envelope was 179 feet, its diameter 27-1/2 feet. The screw was in front instead of behind as in all others previously constructed. The motor which weighed 220-1/2 lbs. was driven by electricity and developed 8-1/2 horse power. The propeller was 24 feet in diameter and only made 46 revolutions to the minute. This was the first time electricity was used as a motor force, and mighty possibilities were conceived.

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